Where slaughter'd beasts lie quivering, pile on pile, And bare-armed fleshers, bathed in bloody dew, Ply hard their ghastly trade, and hack and hew, And mock sweet Mercy's name, yet loathe the while The lot that chains them to this service vile, Their hands in hideous carnage to imbrue: Lo, there!—the preacher of the Good and True, The Moral Man, with sanctimonious smile! "Thrice happy beasts," he murmurs, "'tis our love, Our thoughtful love that sends ye to the knife (Nay, doubt not, as ye welter in your gore!); For thus alone ye earned the boon of life, And thus alone the Moralist may prove His sympathetic soul—by eating more." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PREFACE In preparing this "Logic of Vegetarianism" for a new edition, I have carefully re-read a sheaf of press opinions which greeted the first appearance of the book some seven years ago, with the hope of profiting by any adverse criticism which might point out arguments that I had overlooked. In this, however, I have been disappointed, for, apart from a few such objections as that raised in all seriousness by the _Spectator_—that I had not done justice to the great problem of what would become of the Esquimaux—the only definite complaint which I can find is that the representatives of flesh-eating whom I have introduced in the dialogues are deliberately made to talk nonsense. "It is easy," said one critic, "to confute an opponent if you have the selection of the arguments and the framing of the replies." I ought not, perhaps, to have expected that the assurance given in my introductory chapter (p. 2) as to the authenticity of the anti-vegetarian pleadings would shield me from this charge; indeed, the _Vegetarian Messenger_, in a friendly review of the book, expressed doubt as to the policy of using dialogue at all, because, as it remarked, "the arguments against vegetarianism are often so silly that it looks as if the author had set up a man of straw in order to demolish him." Yet, as the _Messenger_ itself added, "there is not an argument against vegetarianism quoted in this volume which we have not, time after time, seen seriously brought forward by our opponents." Surely it would be a strange thing if food reformers had to avoid any terse presentment of their adversaries' reasoning for the very fact of its imbecility! And there is this further question. If I have failed to include in my selection the effective arguments against vegetarianism, where and what are they? Looking through those cited in the press notices, I can discover none that seem to be formidable; but rather than again be suspected of unfair suppression, let me frankly quote the following specimens of the beef-eater's philosophy: